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Eileen Moore hadn’t seen her son in five years.
It felt like a lifetime ago. She was still married, her last name was still Harrington, she had only just turned forty. Her biggest worries at the time were keeping up with her weekly book club and having a hot meal ready for whenever her husband came home. She was a different person — a worse person — and that was why it’d been so long.
Motherhood was never a choice she had the privilege of making. If she had been born just twenty or thirty years later? Sure, maybe, but not for a woman of her time. For all the strides she had seen and heard of over the years, marriage was still something of a transaction, a strategic move, and Robert Harrington was her winning lottery ticket, but it came at the price of providing an heir.
She got lucky on the first go of it, with a bouncing baby boy they named Steven. He was healthy as ever, so Robert didn’t press for anymore children and neither did she, not when the pregnancy, and subsequent newborn phase, had been so hard on her. She took to motherhood like a pig to flying, to the point where she managed to sweet talk her way into getting a nanny, who did more than their fair share of work. They would deal with the brunt of childcare while Eileen kept the house clean and showed up for all the necessary events like parent-teacher conferences or championship games. It was a pretty good system — or so it was thought at the time — that relieved her of a considerable amount of stress and helped guide Steve into becoming a fine and respectable young man until he was old enough to take care of himself.
This was all to say that she and Robert weren’t the most hands-on parents.
He always said that it was a good thing, a way to prepare Steve for the real world, because he would be on his own once he turned eighteen. Which turned out to be true. Robert applied for a relocation in his company and got it, then moved Eileen to Manhattan with him, so they were gone right after Steve graduated from high school. They would visit for big holidays, sometimes for birthdays, but that was it. Steve had the house to himself otherwise, had to pay rent ‘to learn some responsibility,’ according to his father.
Eileen never felt one way or the other. Steve was, to her, always a very independent kid and he never voiced any disdain for the situation, so what reason was there to worry if she was doing the right thing?
Plenty of reasons, apparently. She just wasn’t around to see them.
She and Robert came back to Hawkins for Thanksgiving in ‘86 and found that Steve wasn’t there. His room empty, his car gone. No note. Nothing at all.
Robert was glad for it, he said that the kid was finally growing up and leaving the nest, but something in Eileen broke that night. Her son was nowhere to be found and her husband didn’t give a damn. She went to the chief of police and he didn’t give a damn either. By all accounts — if he even looked into it — Steve left on his own accord, and there were no laws requiring him to tell her where he went since he was a legal adult.
She tried to ask his friends where he might have gone, but it was then that she realized she didn’t even know if he had friends. He must have, right? There was that Tommy kid he’d mentioned in the past, or his girlfriend Nancy, but when she’d finally managed to contact both of them, they told her the truth. Tommy and Steve had a falling out years ago, a rather nasty one if his tone of voice was anything to go by. More than that, Nancy and Steve had broken up before he even graduated.
Dead ends, all of them.
The stress wore her down. It ate away at her resolve slowly but steadily, a running river’s erosion of stone, until she was desperate enough to stay in Hawkins and look for her son while Robert went back to Manhattan. They rarely spoke. It didn’t bother her too much. That was just how he was. Never that affectionate, a limited amount of love to give. She made her peace with it decades ago, but had Steve? Was that what drove him away?
Questions like that popped up from time to time. She couldn’t think of one big incident that led to a break of the final straw, so she wondered if it had been an accumulation of things, but it always left her stumped. They’d provided Steve with a good life, she couldn’t think of any sensible thing he could want beyond that — not enough to leave over.
After a while, Eileen’s resolve split right in two. It was Steve’s birthday. He had been gone for months, still no letter or phone call to even tell her that he was safe, and she had exhausted all her resources to find him on her own. She planned to drown her sorrows in ice cream and booze, went to Big Buy to get it all, when she overheard some teenagers talking loudly in the same aisle as her. It was a gaggle of them, six in total, and she saw nothing too remarkable about them beyond what they were talking about.
“Hurry up! We can’t be here all night,” one of them shouted. He had a mop of curly brown hair and an obnoxiously colorful button-up shirt. One of his friends, a tall and scrawny boy with shaggy black hair, just rolled his eyes.
“What crawled up your ass and got twisted sideways?”
The redheaded girl in a wheelchair punched him in the arm for that, making the only other girl with them cackle.
“It’s Steve’s birthday, remember? We gotta call him before he goes to work tonight.”
Eileen’s heart stopped when she heard it. There was no way it was a coincidence. Steve whose birthday was today? That had to be her son.
“Are you talking about Steve Harrington?” she asked. She walked over to them, who all went silent when she drew close, eyeing her suspiciously. If looks could kill, the redhead would have made her drop dead in seconds. So would the other girl, who had the glare not of a child, but of something far more powerful. It made Eileen sit just on the side of uneasiness.
“Who wants to know?”
“I’m his mother.”
The atmosphere changed with that. So silent that they could actually hear the music being played over the static-ridden speakers overhead. The kids all went stiff, glancing between each other before finally looking at the boy with the colorful button-up.
“Uh, no. Different Steve. Sorry for the confusion.”
She didn’t believe him, but the kids turned tail and ran before she could ask anymore questions. That was the split. She called her husband for the first time in weeks and demanded that they hire a private investigator to find Steve, but it didn’t go the way she hoped. Robert refused, said it was his money and he didn’t want to waste it.
It became a big splinter in their marriage. There had been some before, all the infidelity and inattentiveness, but this was more than that, and it only got worse. A year after Steve left, Robert called. He told her the ugly truth of it all. He’d been having an affair with his twenty-something year old secretary ever since he got back to Manhattan and not only was she pregnant, but she was refusing to get an abortion too.
Eileen wished she could say that she handled it with grace, but she didn’t. She didn’t have it in her.
There was a lot of screaming. A lot of throwing Robert’s things out on the front lawn just to let all of Loch Nora know her husband was a cheating bastard because she didn’t hold back when neighbors asked.
The divorce was ugly, but the judge favored her, given the circumstances. She got everything she wanted, along with a hefty sum of alimony each month, which she used to buy and furnish a townhouse in Indianapolis near her sister. It was nothing special, but she could make it her own, and that started her down the long, arduous path of self discovery.
She didn’t have a sense of self. Not anymore. She had gotten married right out of high school, had her son at just twenty, and her ex-husband had been domineering about everything she said and did until she was the perfect suburban trophy wife. She lost who she was, and years later, she wanted to get herself back, so that was what she did.
It took a long time. She tried all the gimmicks at first — yoga, vacations, diets — but nothing worked. It wasn’t until her sister suggested therapy that she actually got somewhere.
Her therapist was a nice older woman named Dorothy who didn’t pull any punches, especially when it came to Steve. All sessions spent talking about him ended with Eileen in tears, feeling like the scum of the earth.
She hadn’t been a good mother to Steve. She knew that now, just as she knew she had to fix it, but to do that, she had to find him first.
The private detective was pricey, but well worth it. Just three weeks after getting hired, he came back with a slew of information. Steve had been living in the same two-bedroom apartment since he left Hawkins, with a roommate named Edward Munson, and working as a middle school history teacher and basketball coach since he graduated from Loyola last year. It was presumed, but not confirmed, that he had a girlfriend with the first name Robin, as they met up for coffee and went to each other’s apartments a few times a month if not weekly.
From the outside looking in, he had a pretty nice life. Eileen just wished she was a part of it.
She didn’t know what to do. Part of her wanted to call or write a letter, that way she didn’t catch him too off guard, but another part of her — the stronger part — wanted to physically see him, unable to rest until she knew, beyond a doubt, that he was safe. It took a few weeks of internal conflict and consulting Dorothy, but in the end, she made the three hour drive to Chicago.
Steve was in a rather eclectic intersection of Lakeview. His building had a bright yellow door and the shop underneath was for a psychic offering tarot readings for a dollar per minute. There was no security system in place, anyone could just walk right into the tiny lobby and go upstairs, so she didn’t have to wait around to be let inside.
It was both a blessing and a curse.
Every floor the elevator passed brought a heavier lump in her throat and she clutched the straps of her purse with a vengeance, knuckles going white with the force of it. By the time she reached Steve’s apartment door, she was all but trembling.
There was soft music playing from the other side of it. She recognized the song from a Buddy Holly record that she used to put on for him when he was a baby and couldn’t sleep. It tugged hard at her heartstrings. From the other side of the door came laughter too, bright and jovial like she’d never heard from him before. That tugged even harder.
Was it, somehow, that he remembered the songs from those nights? Did he think of her when he heard them? Did he think of her at all?
Steve could have contacted her if he wanted to, but half a decade passed without a word shared between them, so that was a good hint — if not the answer outright — and she wondered if coming here was a mistake. Her son had built a new life without her, was it selfish to pry her way back in? To come barreling in like a hurricane? Maybe it was, but she was already there. Steve was just beyond the door, so she garnered the nerve to lift her hand and knock. It didn’t take long for the sound of footsteps to grow closer, for the lock to unclick, for the door to swing open.
In front of her, after all those years, stood her son. She could just about cry.
“Hi, Steven,” she said, and all the joy coming from the apartment was suddenly gone. Steve’s expression was one of shock, every feature etched with it. He didn’t do anything but stare, but Eileen stared too, dissecting every change in his appearance since the last time she saw him.
He looked a tad older, but had the same hair, same eyes, and same moles. He was wearing a worn-out green flannel with a white shirt underneath, and a necklace with a bird on it was hanging from his throat, which had faded scars around it like a choker. When had that happened? And what happened to cause that, exactly? He was wearing glasses too. When had he gotten those?
After a short while, a voice came from further inside the apartment.
“Sweetheart? Who’s at the door?”
It was a deep voice with a small hint of rasp, and Steve took in a sharp breath at the sound of it. He looked terrified, frozen with it, and it took Eileen far too long to figure out why. The voice didn’t belong to a roommate, it belonged to a boyfriend.
He came up behind Steve to get a look. He had long and dark curly hair and a lot of scars across his skin, almost as many tattoos. His eyes went wide when he saw her.
“Oh, fuck,” he said. He immediately looked at Steve, clueless as to what to do, which was enough for him to actually react. He gestured behind him for the man to leave, muttering something under his breath that Eileen couldn’t quite make out. Whatever it was, it helped. The man just nodded, quickly squeezed Steve’s shoulder, and left them alone.
Without the man’s presence, Steve’s demeanor changed drastically.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. He sounded angry — looked angry — like he was just barely containing it, and it finally occurred to Eileen that this had the potential to go poorly. Dorothy had warned her as much, but there was a stubborn piece of her that refused to believe that Steve never wanted her in his life again. Now, she saw that as a very real possibility, and it terrified her just as much as it made sense to her.
“I’m sorry for just dropping by like this. I was going to call, but I really wanted to see you.”
“Well, you saw me. You can go now.” He went to close the door, maybe to slam it in her face, and Eileen shattered. Tears welled up in her eyes no matter how much she willed herself to keep it together.
“Wait,” she pleaded. It made Steve falter. “Please. Steven, I…I want to apologize. I need to. For everything.”
That made him stop dead.
For a few seconds, it seemed like he was still debating whether to slam the door or not, but something swayed him. He stepped to the side and gestured toward the living room behind him.
“I’ll make you some tea.”
He didn’t say anything else, didn’t even look at her while she found a place on the couch and took in her surroundings. It was a nice apartment. Tall ceilings, exposed brick, lots of natural light. There were a lot of colors and patterns all at once, and knickknacks out the wazoo. It looked like the polar opposite of the house Steve grew up in and she wondered if, maybe, that was the point.
She tried to figure out some things about his life just based on what she saw, and there were a few conclusions she came to.
There was a menorah on the kitchen table, but a decorated tree in the corner of the living room, which meant that his boyfriend was Jewish and they were celebrating both Hanukkah and Christmas. There were pictures of a bunch of kids hanging on the walls, a lot of whom she recognized as the ones she tried talking to at Big Buy about Steve, which meant they were friends. There was a set of metal food bowls on the floor, small ones, which meant they either had a cat or a little dog.
There was a long, tense silence when he finally came over with the cups of tea. He sat on the couch adjacent to her rather than sitting next to her. She tried not to take it personally, but it still hurt. There was probably more where that came from too, so she might as well rip the bandaid off and face it head-on, but she couldn’t. She felt the need to soften the blows, to start somewhere easier and work her way up.
“So, um, how long have you been with—”
“Eddie,” he said. He smiled at the mere mention of him. It was warm and fond and utterly involuntary. The kind of smile you got only when you were deeply in love. “Five and a half years.”
Another bout of silence, even longer, but Steve broke it this time and she took that for what it was worth.
“How’s dad?”
“I don’t know. We got divorced.”
“Well, shit. How long ago?”
“About four years.”
A third bout of silence, longest of them all. They both tried speaking at the same time, but Steve let her go first when he realized what she was going to say.
“I tried to look for you. After you left. The police couldn’t help, and I realized I didn’t know enough about your friends to ask them. I didn’t know anything. Then, after what happened with your father, I did a lot of self-reflection.”
She paused.
This was the hard part. Admitting it in therapy, where she felt no judgment for the things she said, was one thing. Admitting it here, where she would surely face atonement, was another. But, she would do it. She had to. If there was any chance of getting her son back in her life, then it was the only way.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. Her voice cracked just a little, she counted herself lucky that she didn’t crack with it. “I was a bad mother to you. It shouldn’t have taken what it did for me to realize that, and I can’t imagine the things I put you through, but I hope you can find it in yourself to forgive me for it now.”
She didn’t know what she said wrong, but she definitely hit a nerve. Steve’s expression hardened. He crossed his arms and set his jaw, only breaking his pose when a mangy-looking orange cat jumped into his lap and headbutted his hand, then he loosened up to give it some affection. It was quiet for what felt like hours before he finally spoke.
“You know, when I was a kid, this was all I ever wanted.” He sounded far too nonchalant for the conversation they were having. The calm before the storm. His tone quickly grew colder, though, and words he wielded with it cut Eileen to the bone, but that didn’t stop him. “After I gave up on the idea that, maybe one day, you would love me like moms were supposed to love their kids, I had this daydream. You and Dad would come home from wherever the hell you were traveling and you would throw yourselves at my feet, begging for my forgiveness, because you had some come-to-Jesus moment and finally realized you were shitty parents.”
“Steven, please—”
“What did you think was going to happen?” he asked, almost laughing at her. Angry, sardonic.
This was where Steve and his father differed (though there were many ways, she was sure to learn if she ever got the chance). Robert liked to lecture, he liked to rub her wrongdoings in her face, shoving her nose in it like you would a puppy into its own mess on the carpet. He relished in it, would never let her get a word in edgewise, but Steve was actually expecting her to engage.
“I just wanted you to know how sorry I was. Whether you forgave me or not.”
“What if I can’t?”
“Then, I’ll go,” she said. That didn’t seem to be the answer he expected, because any trace of ire suddenly fell away. Wilted petals of a flower. “It’s your life, Steven. You don’t owe me anything. I just want you to make the choice that’s best for you, and if that means you don’t want to see me again, then I’ll find a way to live with that.”
Eileen went to say more, but her eyes found Eddie, lingering in the doorway with a concerned expression, and she no longer had the words. That was the devotion Steve deserved. She could see it written all over Eddie’s face, and she could see it in everything around her too. The life her son had built was overwhelmed with love, and she didn’t fit into it. Not anymore, if she ever had.
“You don’t have to decide right now.” She reached into her purse for a pen and scrap of paper, then scribbled her home number and new address down for him to have, putting it on the coffee table between them and getting to her feet. “I can see myself out.”
Tears threatened her again. They stung in her eyes, barely unshed, as she walked to the door and opened it, stepping into the hallway. She knew it was foolish to look back — the Orpheus dilemma — but she had to. Just to see her son, for likely the last time, and commit it to memory.
He was looking at her, eyes shining with the same tears as her own, and that broke her heart even further.
“It was good to see you, Steven,” she said, and then shut the door behind her.
After that, it was a race to the elevator. There, she could sob with no prying eyes to observe and no eavesdropping neighbors to overhear. She could hear footsteps of a potential witness to her imminent breakdown grow closer, and she prayed they wouldn’t take the elevator with her. When the doors opened, the footsteps stopped behind her.
“Mom?”
It was Steve, an almost desperate fear in his voice. She turned around to see an expression on his face that was all too similar. She waited, aware enough to know that, whatever was coming, it was going to be important.
“It’s not going to be easy. I need you to know that. I don’t know if it can work, but do you—” he hesitated, and Eileen felt her heart soar with a hope she tried to stifle down “—if you can stay in town for a few days…maybe we can talk some more?”
“I could stick around for a while, if that’s what you want,” she said, and Steve’s face broke into a small yet beautifully relieved smile.
It wasn’t much, but it was a start.